Disclaimer: Characters from the television series Highlander are owned by Panzer-Davis productions.

Maybe

Jay Tryfanstone
2005

Maybe, amongst the rubble, an unbroken bottle. Not malt, which is no bad thing, malt conveying pathos in unacceptable sentimentality, but brandy, and not good brandy but generic, off-the-peg, normal brandy, brandy that has survived by virtue of unexceptionality. Bottle dusted, gritty to the touch, with a chip from the rim that catches the flesh of his lip and rips it with the satisfying heat of pain. Brandy...eight years old by the bottle, the irrelevant label, although surely once upon a time there were racks of bottles and shelves and check-outs and fresh young girls in tunics or maybe that was someone else's memories, another time and another place, or maybe...Blood and brandy, anyway, an unexpected mix, possibly improved by ice of which there is none and has not been for some time although ice will come. Of this is he is sure, for of all the truths he has discarded this one holds fast, ice will come.
But not yet.

He drinks. He breathes. The air he breathes is dry, dusty, glass dust, wood dust, rat piss and woodlice. It does not smell sweet: sweet and acrid has had its day, dog days, the days of blood and running. Days now of sunshine and walking, foot, one foot in front of the other, one road in front of another, overgrown verges and occasional hawks. It's a good year for poppies. It's a good year for walking. Rain...he will not think about the rain, and here at least there is half a roof and perhaps if he digs hard enough and long enough a crypt, unoccupied. By the living. Digging, though, implies settlement implies permanency, implies life, civilisation, trade and government and codification and although all of these things he knows now is not the time, he is not ready. Though maybe in a month, two months, maybe when the moon is full and full again. maybe next year, maybe if it rains again.
Maybe never.